


Hope of a Soldier

by DjarinsRiduur



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Blood and Injury, Death, Other, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-16
Updated: 2021-01-16
Packaged: 2021-03-14 04:22:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28789395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DjarinsRiduur/pseuds/DjarinsRiduur
Summary: Bucky Barnes fought a war in real life and in his head. Only one was stronger than the other. He is left with a memory he doesn’t want and a nightmare that doesn’t seem to end.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Reader, James "Bucky" Barnes/Y/N, James "Bucky" Barnes/You
Kudos: 17





	Hope of a Soldier

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: So this is the first work here. I posted it on Tumblr awhile back, but I figured why not here as well. Don't repost anywhere, this work is mine and mine alone. Enjoy!

War. It was brutal. The act of it killed people, tore lives a part, and left nothing behind when it ended. It was meant to destroy and nothing else. There was no redemption of war. No reason it should happen. It was a fight till the death and he’d been fighting for a while now. An invisible war in his mind, and a real war out in the world. He fought for who knows what reason.

Was he on the good side?

Was he a hero?

These questions kept him awake at night when they didn’t stick him in cryo. When he was finally able to keep his mind straight for a few hours. The words they repeated tore him apart. It kept him up at night with screams of agony. Only the screams weren’t from pain done to him. No this was a different kind of pain. This was anguish only people who have tortured innocents know. This was what he would bear for the rest of his days.

"Soldier you’re up,” someone said.

He listened because he had no other choice. Not listening ended him back in that chair, and refusing meant they would take someone he cared for and kill them. Only he didn’t remember who he cared for. Perhaps he cared for the people he killed. That sick kind of caring, knowing he could do nothing but take their life, because it’s all he knew. It tore him to shreds each time, leaving him to lick the mental wounds.

\------

You knew what battles he’d been through. He wore it all on his sleeve around you. Bucky Barnes was a soldier of war. He’d fought against Nazis and Hydra and he’d fought for them. He’d battled demons for years with no help, but now he was asking for it. He was begging for help. As a soldier of war, he learned to fight on his own; keep himself alive. But now, he couldn’t do it alone. He didn’t want to.

So, when you hear his screams that seem to bounce off the walls of the facility you give him the help he seeks. You run to his side and hold him; wake him up from the nightmare of his past. He holds onto you, the tears streaming down his face and the pain coming back to haunt him. You are his anchor in his ocean of nightmares. Torrential memories that threaten to sink him into their depths.

Tonight, felt different. You could feel the chill of something in the air and it didn’t sit well with you. Drinking your cup of tea, you sat in the kitchen waiting for the exhaustion to hit you. After a whole day of training you were ready to collapse, but you had a ritual. Tea before sleep.

Bucky had gone up before you. He’d felt lighter today. Almost as if he wouldn’t have to battle the demons in his mind again. Except those demons were waiting for him; waiting to strike when he let his guard down. Sleep washed over him and suddenly Bucky wasn’t in modern times anymore.

“SOLDIER!” someone shouted. “SERGEANT BARNES!”

Bucky spun around to see someone lying on the ground. The rifle in his hands was strapped to his back as he sprinted towards the people on the ground. A man was hit and was bleeding out onto the floor. Bucky put his training to work and began to put pressure on the wound trying to cease the bleeding.

“Get a medic!” Bucky shouted.

“He’s not going to make it!” the soldier replied.

Sounds of gunfire continued in the background. Bullets were landing around them as if it was raining and they were caught in the storm. Bucky knew the man needed to get out of the field. He needed to be in the trenches, but right now they had to keep him alive. Grabbing the man’s belt from his waist he tied it around the man’s leg keeping the pressure stable before Bucky turned to find a medic.

“Keep him here!” Bucky shouted.

“Yes sir!” He was able to get a good look at the soldier. No younger than seventeen and he was there holding his friend. He was ready to die for a country that didn’t know he existed. That broke Bucky in two, but he had a job to do.

Dodging bullets he rushed towards the medic who was working on wrapping gauze around another soldier. Only this man seemed to be fading fast. Bucky fell to his knees and pulled the gun from his back before taking aim at the enemy soldiers. He would help to keep the medic alive through this war.

“We have another one,” Bucky yelled over the noise.

The medic nodded. “Get him stable.”

“I already did. We need to get him out of here,” he replied.

Another man down from a bullet Bucky fired. He counted down the minutes till the medic was ready to follow him. Only something went wrong. He didn’t account for the ground fire behind him and a bullet went soaring through the air hitting its mark. The medic fell the ground.

“Shit!” Bucky shouted.

He grabbed the medic’s bag and rushed over to the boy who protected his friend. The fear in the kids eyes nearly made Bucky give him a hug, but this was war and there was no time for tenderness in the hardship of war.

“Where’s the medic?” the boy asked.

Bucky sighed. “Medic’s dead kid.”

“What do we do?”

Bucky glanced up at him before ripping out the bandages. “I’m going to help you fix him up and get him under cover.”

“But they’re dead sergeant.” The monotone voice of the kid made Bucky freeze. It wasn’t the dead look in the kid’s eyes that terrified him the most, it was the silence of the battlefield around him. People had stopped fighting.

“What?” Bucky asked.

The kid looked down and Bucky’s fell back. You lay there eyes open and blood pouring from a wound in your chest. The light was gone from your eyes, and Bucky couldn’t feel anything but pain at the sight. It consumed him until he was unable to do anything but cry out into the cold night air. The kid watched the soldier with sorrowful eyes as he crawled towards the person on the ground.

Bucky gathered you in his arms and sobbed at how you didn’t move. You were lifeless in his arms and if anything had broken the soldier more, it was this. The sight of you gone from his life. The person he loved more than anything. This was his worst nightmare come to life and Bucky didn’t know how to escape it.

“You weren’t supposed to die,” he whispered. “I’m sorry. I couldn’t save you from this war.”

You heard his screams, heard the way they echoed off the walls. Only these screams were different. Your name fell from his lips; a cry of complete and utter anguish. Dropping your mug, you didn’t hear it shatter to the floor, because you were already halfway up the stairs. Slamming his door open you could see the man you loved thrashing on the bed crying out your name as tears streamed down his face.

“Bucky!” you shouted.

Climbing on the bed you held him down and shook him awake. His eyes shot open and he got ready to throw the person off, but the sight of your panic filled eyes had him clutching you closer. A sob escaped his throat as he wrapped you in his arms, but you didn’t dare move. This nightmare was worse than the others and you could feel it.

“Are you okay?” you asked.

In response Bucky rolled over and trapped you underneath him, his head buried in your neck. Wet tears fell on your skin and you could do nothing but hold him. Stroking his now short hair you waited for him to calm down. He breathed you in. Everything about you he took note of. The way your heart beat strongly underneath his, the feel of your breath against his neck. All of it reassured him that he was no longer in war. You were no longer dead in front of him.

“You were dead,” he whispered. “And I couldn’t save you.”

That choked you up. The thought of him coping with your death killed you slowly just as it killed him. Bringing his face up you wiped away the tears on his cheeks before bringing his lips to yours. A shaky sigh left his lips as he crushed you closer until you couldn’t breathe.

“I’m not dead Bucky.” You buried a hand in his hair. “I’m right here with you.”

He nodded still feeling the pain course through him at the sight. It was now burned into the back of his mind, showing itself whenever he closed his eyes. The war he fought was not physical. It was not something he could fire at and have it be gone. No, this war tore him a part from the inside. It played tricks on him, turned him into a monster, and broke him two.

Yet there was something this mental war didn’t account for and that was you. It didn’t expect him to have something that would drag him back to reality whenever he needed it. You were his hope. His last ray of hope that broke through the darkness of war. Shattered its brutality and instead placed something else there.

Was he on the good side?

Was he a hero?

These questions no longer kept him up at night, because he had you there to remind him, they were both yes. He was on the good side now. He fought for the good people. He was a hero to many and a hero to you and Bucky could live with that. He could fight in this war his mind waged on him, to hold onto that bit of hope you gave him.

Eventually his mind calmed down and he was able to look you in the eye and see the life there. It made his heart soar with joy at the sight of you alive underneath him. You weren’t gone from his world, you were there. The soldier who’d fought in many wars was still fighting every day, but he had you to get him through it.

He had hope.


End file.
